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Shadow of the Tomb Raider for Xbox One X Review: feels very familiar

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The final chapter of a trilogy that began five years ago, Shadow of the Tomb Raider seems to have fallen back on past success rather than innovating.

For many years, Lara Croft was more than just the heroine of a cult video game, she was also a sex symbol, famous for her mini-shorts, her ample breasts, and her two pistols. However, her latest incarnation no longer fits that description at all. She is no longer the sex symbol created during an era when it was taken for granted that video games were exclusively male-oriented. Ever since Square Enix rebooted her image in 2013 (with its Tomb Raider game), Lara has become a mature young adult – a true explorer.

Square Enix decided to capitalize on the new direction in which it had taken the game franchise by creating a trilogy. After Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has now been released. This last chapter is meant to conclude Lara’s epic saga by allowing her to fully assimilate her legacy, her status, and her destiny.

Technological maturity

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is able to take full advantage of the power of modern gaming consoles – allowing Lara to look her absolute best. The technological maturity of the PS4 and the Xbox One has allowed Eidos Montreal, the studio that has taken over for Crystal Dynamics, to develop a highly-detailed and visually stunning game. This high level of detail made it possible, for example, to realistically recreate a Mexican village celebrating the Day of the Dead, the rich scenery of Peru as well as dark and dense forests – not to mention the stunning realism of the game’s underwater environments.

Amazingly detailed graphics

This rich detail can, in large part, be credited to a technology that we never get tired of highlighting: HDR. Eidos Montreal’s exploitation of HRD’s full potential allows Shadow of the Tomb Raider to excel. Far from being just another asset that can be mentioned on the game’s packaging, HDR accentuates the contrast between the game’s decidedly dark overtones and the luxuriance of its landscapes, the brilliance of its in-game treasures/reflections, and its amazing lighting effects. The Xbox One X, because of its increased resolution, provides wonderful detail (it is also possible to select a 60 fps mode geared towards more fluid gameplay).

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Philips Momentum 436M6VBPAB Review: a real gaming monitor – but not just for gamers

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Philips Momentum 436M6VBPABWhat do you look for in a gaming monitor? It is quite possible that the new Philips Momentum does exactly what you imagine. 4K, HDR and Ambiglow are just three of its many exciting features.

The brand-new Philips Momentum 436M6VBPAB seeks to combine everything on a 42.51-inch (108cm diagonal) monitor, in line with the current trend in the monitor industry. With a 4K UHD resolution of 3840×2160 pixels and high dynamic range (HDR), it should be a superb match for the current consoles Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro. To simply speak of one monitor would sound like an understatement. Therefore, the manufacturer has also spoken of a “Momentum monitor” and Philips has a number of special features ready.

Philips Momentum glows with Ambiglow

Behind the name UltraClear 4K UHD, the Philips Momentum hides an LCD display (MVA) with WLED backlighting, 720cd/m² and a contrast of 50,000,000:1. Thanks to a BT.-709 coverage of 100 percent and a DCI-P3 coverage of 97.6 percent, the 16:9 screen is perfect for professional applications such as CAD, 3D or spreadsheets. Its strengths should be particularly prominent in video games, though.

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Best Laptops for College Students under 500 Dollars 2018

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The most underestimated use-case of laptops these days is education. People think that just about anything would serve this purpose. Nothing can be further from truth. As any college student will tell you with gritted teeth; poorly designed laptops can ruin your entire semester.

As a college/school student you would want a reliable storage solution to keep your lengthy essays and notes safe and secure. You will want an insane amount of battery, if you are taking too many classes and need to spend at least 8 to 9 hours without the hassle of charging your laptop.

Also an important factor will be the weight you have to carry all day long, and the build quality. Carrying a laptop in your backpack can put both you and your device under a lot of strain. Next thing to consider would be the use case. Do you want just browsing and word processing out of it? Are you a Computer science student and maybe want something more bleeding edge? What are the budget constraints?

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Best Antivirus for Windows 10

Regarding antiviruses, there are a plethora of logical options. We all use the internet differently and inn order to help you choose, we’ll determine which security suite suits which user profile.

After closely analyzing most of 2017’s suites, one thing is for certain: these solutions have a rather limited impact on performances, and their efficiency is superior to the basic defense tools built into Windows 10.

[toc]We have noticed a trend: suites include more features, including PC optimization, and take into account the diversity of devices in the household. But, besides BitDefender, all the publishers must do better integrating their mobile solutions and offering the possibility of controlling everything from a single interface.

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Buying a Ryzen motherboard: Which Chipset, Manufacturer and RAM is right for you?

X370, B350 or A320: The AMD Ryzen is becoming ever more attractive to PC hobbyists for its significantly cheaper price than at release. We reveal which motherboard chipset you should get.

Ryzen motherboard

The Ryzen 1800X is the flagship of the new AMD processors. It will not be fun for users to use without a motherboard, though.

AMD Ryzen CPUs are a good choice for gamers, as the CPUs performed very well in tests. The performance is great, and the price is also appealing. For PC hobbyists, it is important to find useful combinations of board and motherboard, as well as RAM and graphics cards. AMD have three chipsets, on which basis users can choose matching motherboards. That would be the models X370, B350 or A320. This excludes boards for SFF systems (Small Form Factor) with an A300 chipset (X300 and A300). It is a less popular format, which is often found in office computers or mini PCs. The latter also applies for the A320. Although, through the focus on classical desktop systems, the chipset is, in our opinion, not left out.

The order of the chipsets corresponds to the descending request profiles of different users. The X370 is therefore tailored towards enthusiasts and the A320 to the simple average user. All motherboards for AMD Ryzen processors rely on an AM4 socket, just as with the previous generation of AMD processors and APUs (Advanced Processing Unit; Processors with integrated graphics). The X370 chipset does not support processors with integrated graphics, only the B350 and A320 can do this. It will be interesting when AMD releases processors from the Raven Ridge series in the beginning of 2018, which require video output on the board for each integrated graphics unit.

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Geforce RTX 2080 Ti, 2080 & 2070: Prices, Release, Raytracing Games and more

Nvidia has introduced the gaming graphics cards Geforce RTX 2080 Ti, 2080 and 2070. They offer real-time raytracing from 639 euros. Nvidia provide a list of all raytracing games.

geforce-rtx-2080-ti

The Geforce RTX series offers a new cooler in the Founders Edition with the RTX instead of GTX lettering. Pictured: Geforce RTX 2080 Ti.

We summarise the most important information about the release and prices of the new Nvidia graphics cards Geforce GTX 2080 Ti, 2080 and 2070. The co-founder of Nvidia, Jen-Hsun Huang, introduced the GPUs of the Turing generation on Monday evening in Cologne, Germany, just one day before Gamescom 2018. The gaming graphics cards are coming on 20th September 2018 and have been available for pre-order since the unveiling of the cards.

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Best Drones 2018: How to Choose Best Drones for Beginners and Pros?

From 20 to 1700 dollars: all about leisure drones

Leisure drones have made their way out of ultra-specialized boutiques and have found a place on the shelves of big box stores. This type of drone has become extremely affordable, sometimes retailing for as little as 20 to 25 dollars. Of course, the more experience you become flying a drone, the more you will want to fly even faster and more powerful models. The price of these more powerful drones can be surprisingly high and the introduction of the Mi Drone by Xiaomi – which promises to offer rock-bottom prices – has done nothing to change the status quo in the mid to high range segment of the market.

Drones, what are they good for anyhow? These devices, which are the heirs to an older generation of remote-controlled models are, simply put, really about taking joy in flying them. However, sports cameras such as the Geopro have opened up an entirely new universe to these devices which are now capable of aerial photography. Imagine taking photos of your holiday as seen from the air. Or how about a “dronie”- a selfie of yourself taken from a drone!?

Our favorites

Before going all out and buying yourself a large drone in order to take superb aerial photographs, you would be better off honing your piloting skills by practicing with a more reasonably-sized drone. We have elected to speak about a few drones which are small and easy to learn how to fly and good for filming video – good for taking on vacation or for filming nice landscapes… The manufacturer DJI has a virtual monopoly on the flying camera market, with a more than 70% market share! It must be said that this manufacturer has quite a few years of experience in manufacturing drones geared towards both professionals and the general public. It is also the manufacturer which offers the most highly developed and effective innovations. All in all, it is hard to compete with DJI and the French Parrot company, as well as the American manufacturer 3DR, have fallen behind. Furthermore, in terms of the smallest drones, there is a fierce battle raging between less well-known manufacturers.

What size should you choose?

The smallest drones measure 5 cm across and only weigh a few dozen grams. Oftentimes their remote control is bigger than they are! They closely resemble children’s toys, but don’t be fooled, these are veritable flying machines which behave just like bigger models. They are even harder to fly than larger models since their built-in electronics are less sophisticated. They are conceived to be inexpensive – mainly in terms of reducing weight (these mini-drones rely on small “brushed” motors, which are lightweight, but which have a short life-span of around 200 flights) as well as on low-capacity batteries. All of the internal electronics of these drones fit onto a single circuit board. These circuits are comprised of sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope) as well as chips to control features such as stabilization and the processing of flight commands…

drone It is possible to fit a camera of a few grams on board a drone that it only ten centimeters across. The video quality will be mediocre, but it will allow you to gain access to a different perspective and to keep a memory of all of your flights!

Drones of 25 cm and upwards are usually equipped with more powerful “brushless” motors which make it possible to carry a heavier load such as a more powerful battery, a GoPro type camera or even a combination camera + transmitter for immersion flights. These motors need to be controlled by electronic circuits called ESCs (Electronic Speed Control).

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RAM: 7 things you need to know about memory

Our big RAM guide gives seven tips about memory and answers questions such as “how much is enough?”, “which modules are suitable?” and more.

RAM

Some advertising slogans remain in our memory. “It’s more worthwhile now than ever before”, as it was often broadcasted in an advert about a natural medicine with a lot of alcohol. The slogan, however, is not only perfect for said medicine but also for the memory of a Windows computer.

Memory has always been essential to the speed of the system, but today it is even more important than ever before, with ever-increasing amounts of data and file sizes. Regardless of how fast a processor is or how quickly a hard drive works, too little or unsuitable memory is a bottleneck in the system, which cannot be eliminated by other components and simply acts as a brake. It is therefore crucial that you not only get the right amount of memory for your computer, but also choose the suitable modules and optimal configuration. The best way to do this is revealed in this article.

Tip #1: Take an inventory of your memory

Firstly, you need to determine how much memory has been built into your computer. Usually, PC motherboards have four RAM slots, of which one, two or all four slots have memory buffers, depending on the computer. There are two ways to find out which of these circumstances apply to you: You can either open the case of your computer and look for it or you can install the tool CPU-Z and let it do the work for you.

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Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. OneDrive: Which is better?

Cloud-storage options are unbelievably practical; provided you have an internet connection they are available around the clock, almost anywhere. The cloud hard drive can be accessed on both a desk-PC as well as over a web browser or a mobile app. Many suppliers give free access to their cloud storage and, on top of that, provide you with a generous allocation of free storage space. This then makes it very easy to store a large collection of documents, music, videos and pictures in the cloud.

Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive are the three contenders. All three integrate with Windows Explorer using their own folder and make cloud-uploading child‘s play. Furthermore, they automatically synchronise the cloud content with all connected end devices. Whether you access the cloud through your smartphone or your PC, the database that you view is the same. After a file has been uploaded over a web browser it can, for example, also be retrieved on a tablet if the cloud app is installed on it.

Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. OneDrive

All three cloud services (in this case Dropbox) support the automatic, mobile upload of photos.

The synchronising opens the door to further practical cloud functions – sharing of content. Users of Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive no longer need to send files via e-mail for them to be accessible to others. Instead, they simply need to send a link over which the recipients can directly retrieve and download the files. It works similarly in cases where documents that are in the cloud are meant to be worked on together, by multiple people. One can, for example provide access to Excel table or Word documents to others via an invitation. The necessary office tools are included in the trio; in Dropbox and Microsoft One Drive, Office Online is integrated whilst Google Drive has its own Office-suite which is however, compatible with the Microsoft-world.

Only secure with additional tools

In all praise for the cloud storages, when one uses the local data protection law as a benchmark they neglect the topic of safety. Each of the three providers operate their servers in, amongst others, the USA where the government has established significantly more power of intervention. At Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, the transfer of files between the end device and the cloud storage is SSL-encrypted, but once the files are uploaded, it is up to the influence of the user to decide what happens to the content.

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V-Sync, G-Sync, and FreeSync for PC Monitors explained

A G-Sync or FreeSync monitoris a must for any gamer looking for the highest level of performance. If you thought that having a powerful PC capable of running your games at a high frame rate was good enough, think again. This article will explain all of the factors you will need to consider in order to improve your PC game playing experience.

PC displays

Everything you need to know about V-Sync, G-Sync, and FreeSync

Whether you own a veritable war machine or a more modest PC, if you have ever experienced lagging or image tearing, the problem may lie with your display. Most PC monitors have a refresh rate of 60 Hz (meaning that the entirety of the displayed content is redrawn 60 times per second).

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